by Thinus Ferreira
On Monday 7 701 South Africans watched the linear TV broadcast debut of HBO's new fantasy drama series House of the Dragon on M-Net (DStv 101) with 1 500 who were up at 3am to watch the episode at the same time as it was airing in the United States.
While 7 701 DStv Premium subscribers in South Africa watched the first episode of the new dragons and danger series on M-Net as a TV broadcast - the number most important to broadcasters and advertisers - there would also have been some more watching it online on DStv Catch Up who are not included in the official TV ratings tally, as well as people who started watching the pirate copy that leaked on torrent and download sharing sites a day before the show's TV debut.
TV ratings for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa are hard to come by or non-existent since many African countries don't have one but M-Net also showed House of the Dragon on its M-Net Africa channel feed elsewhere on the continent.
According to ratings compiled and provided by the Broadcast Research Council of South Africa (BRCSA), M-Net lured 1 505 DStv Premium subscribers who watched on Monday morning at 3:00, with another 6 196 viewers who watched M-Net on Monday night at 21:30.
In the United Kingdom House of the Dragon pulled 1.39 million Sky subscribers to tune in to the Sky Atlantic channel with 394 000 who watched at 21:00. "Viewing over the last 24 hours for House of the Dragon across Sky and NOW has been as epic as the show itself," Sky said.
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) which didn't provide viewership numbers, said in a statement on Wednesday said that House of the Dragon had the largest ever collective viewership across 21 countries for a new TV show or movie in Europe on its HBO Max video streaming service, which is not available in Africa.
"The platform saw unprecedented demand starting in the early hours which peaked on Monday evening. House of the Dragon is by far the biggest launch in the history of HBO and HBO Max in Europe, breaking previous records for a new title. The number of viewers for the first episode exceeded all expectations."
In America, WarnerMedia in a statement on Monday said "The premiere of House of the Dragon drew 9.986 million viewers across linear and HBO Max platforms in the United States on Sunday night, the largest audience for any new original series in the history of HBO".
